Embattled Kaplan College to close Pembroke Pines campus

February 28, 2012|By Scott Travis, Sun Sentinel

Kaplan College plans to close its Pembroke Pines campus -- a school that opened to great fanfare two years ago, but quickly lost students after a federal investigation raised questions about its admissions practices.

The 28,000-square foot campus was Kaplan's first and only physical college to open in South Florida. Most students take classes through Kaplan's online university, based in Fort Lauderdale.

But any hopes of rapid expansion in Florida halted after the federal Government Accountability Office released a scathing report about the admissions practices at 15 for-profit schools, including Kaplan's Pembroke Pines campus.

The college has stopped admitting new students and expects to shut down in May 2013, after the school's 53 students complete their course work, said Ron Iori, a spokesman for Kaplan Higher Education, the parent company.

"This was a difficult decision, but there just wasn't enough student demand,'' he said.

The school opened in January 2010 and was hit with the GAO investigation soon after, in August 2010.

Undercover agents posed as students and recorded their interactions with admissions officers. The video showed a Kaplan admissions officer falsely telling an applicant the school had the same accreditation as Harvard and the University of Florida.

The officer wouldn't let the applicant speak to a financial aid representative until she signed an enrollment contract. And he told her not to worry about repaying student loans because "tomorrow's never promised."

The report also said a test proctor improperly coached an agent during an admissions test.

Kaplan officials made the unprecedented move of suspending enrollment for new students in Pembroke Pines and a location in Riverside, Calif., which was also cited in the report. Kaplan fired a number of admissions officers and administrators in Pembroke Pines following an internal investigation.

Shortly afterward, the company overhauled its admissions policies, allowing students to try out the school for a few weeks before making any commitments. Kaplan also stopped rewarding admissions officers based on how many students they enrolled.

Enrollment slipped at Kaplan's college and university locations, and the company has gone through several rounds of layoffs in the past two years, including four at Pembroke Pines last week.

But the scrutiny continued as Florida's Attorney General started investigating allegations of misrepresentations by admissions staff at Kaplan and seven other for-profit schools: the University of Phoenix, Argosy University, MedVance Institute, Everest University, Concorde Career Colleges, Sanford Brown College and Keiser University, which is now non-profit.

The investigation is still active, according to the Attorney General's website, and several other states are also investigating.

By the time Kaplan's Pembroke Pines location resumed admissions in March 2011, enrollment was down from 160 at its peak to about 60.

The closure is a disappointment to Pembroke Pines Mayor Frank Ortis, who cut the ribbon at the grand opening. The city has actively recruited colleges and universities.

"We want our young people to keep their education going, so every time a higher education component comes to Pembroke Pines, we are thrilled," he said. "And when one closes, we're upset about it."

Iori said a nursing program at the campus offered through the online Kaplan University will continue to enroll students, regardless of what happens to the building.

The campus featured multiple classrooms, labs and lecture rooms, as well as a firearm training simulator room for a criminal justice program and a resource center for student research, according to a 2010 press release.

In June 2010, Kaplan opened a second Florida campus, in Jacksonville, which is still open.